Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,601 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Autumn Tale
Lowest review score: 0 Car 54, Where Are You?
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,106 out of 7601
  2. Mixed: 1,473 out of 7601
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7601
7601 movie reviews
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  1. Lawrence of Arabia (re-release)
    It's perhaps only because it can't be seen in its full glory on television that "Lawrence" isn't ranked more highly on some recent all-time "best film" lists. But it belongs near the very top. It's an astonishing, unrepeatable epic.
  2. The Ignorant Fairies
    A work about memory and loss, His Secret Life becomes a forum of Antonia's liberation of consciousness and feeling, but there are too many contradictory moods sharing the same space, resulting in a tentativeness and uncertainty.
  3. The Banger Sisters
    A lot of fun, with an undeniable energy sparked by two actresses in their 50s working at the peak of their powers. Juicy roles for older women? Let the revolution begin.
  4. The Four Feathers
    At its best, this new film does mix grandeur with skepticism, excitement with reflection. In the end, like Harry, it redeems itself.
  5. Secretary
    Though I would agree it's original -- it's the first aboveground romance movie I've seen in which the heroine is repeatedly spanked, verbally tormented and tied to a chair by her lover--- it's not an experience I much enjoyed.
  6. Invincible
    Erratically acted and, at times, clumsily written.
  7. Spirited Away
    It's a movie full of bewitching images and timeless fun and beauty.
  8. 8 Women
    An ebullient toast to grande dames: part homage, part camp, all artifice and a thoroughly entertaining, if light, confection.
  9. Trapped
    Splashes its drama all over the screen, subjecting its audience and characters to action that feels not only manufactured, but also so false you can see the filmmakers' puppet strings.
  10. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    Offers the most onscreen explosions in recent memory. It's almost pornography for arsonists.
  11. The Experiment
    For all its slickness, is an R-rated version of "Survivor," "Big Brother" or any number of reality-TV shows that present voyeurism as entertainment and exploitation as insight.
  12. Alias Betty
    What really makes Alias Betty stand out, even from good recent French ensemble films like "Eight Women" and "Venus Beauty Institute," is that ingenious, Rendell-derived story. To kidnap an old phrase, it's a corker.
  13. The Children of the Century
    A romance incandescent, a fiery pageant of l'amour fou. Whatever its historical transgressions, it opens up a vein and lets life and blood pour out.
  14. Barbershop
    Entertaining, surprisingly well-written and often rowdily amusing picture. It is predictable in many ways but also full of heart, humor and personality.
  15. Quitting
    Daring and beautifully made, Zhang Yang's Quitting plays like a Chinese "Rebel Without a Cause."
  16. Stealing Harvard
    Some actors steal scenes. Tom Green just gives them a bad odor. This self-infatuated goofball is far from the only thing wrong with the clumsy comedy.
  17. Igby Goes Down
    Think of the Slocumbs as distant relatives of "The Royal Tenenbaums," only more dysfunctional and far from attractively "quirky."
  18. City by the Sea
    Takes a fascinating true story and turns it into a conventional cop thriller, hoking up the provocative three-generation saga of the LaMarca family.
  19. In Praise of Love
    Like most Godard, it can be watched repeatedly, always yielding new secrets and beauties. Most profound of all, perhaps, are those incredible black-and-white images of Paris.
  20. Mad Love
    Star Pilar Lopez de Ayala is such a feisty, striking presence, and the film so conventional in its depiction of a jealous and insatiable love, that it is hard to see Juana as anything other than a typical soap opera heroine.
  21. FeardotCom
    As scary and minor-chord heavy as FearDotCom can be, there's no big payoff, no logical resolution.
  22. Undisputed
    There's no denying that Undisputed delivers the action-movie goods, and so do Snipes and Rhames. It should have been more memorable, but at least it doesn't stumble in the ring.
  23. How I Killed My Father
    Cold, nervy and memorable.
  24. Crop Circles: Quest for Truth
    Less a pure documentary than it is a fact-finding mission, with the real story waiting to be presented somewhere down the line.
  25. S1m0ne
    A ravishing crock. Like its title character, a computer-generated movie star programmed to resemble a cross between Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Kim Basinger, it's beautiful but empty, gorgeous but spurious.
  26. Red Satin
    A fascinating examination of the joyous, turbulent self-discovery made by a proper, middle-aged woman.
  27. Little Secrets
    One can hardly argue with the desire to make a wholesome movie for families that extols honesty and decency, but it all comes too easily, too superficially.
  28. Serving Sara
    When Serving Sara reaches beyond its grasp and dreams big, Perry and Hurley float the movie on aplomb and wit. When the film gears down for slower-paced set pieces and disposable villains, its stars find themselves knee-deep in a giant comedy cow pie.
  29. Gibel Otrara
    If you are looking for an abundance of eye-gouging, flesh-burning, blood-oozing and head-chopping, not to mention cauldron after cauldron of boiling oil, than THIS is the movie for you. [05 Jul 2002, p.C6]
    • Chicago Tribune
  30. One Hour Photo
    One Hour Photo is a piece of often masterly image-making, a half-brilliant film with a revelatory lead performance by Williams. But it's also a thriller that gets trapped in surfaces: shiny, exciting, full of dread but often only tricks of the camera.
  31. Possession
    Possession needs a sharp eye, a wicked tongue, less reverence and much more of its author's voice.
  32. Mostly Martha
    Thanks to Echer, Nettelbeck and this delicious movie, I was able to hear "Country" and the other Jarrett tunes in scene after scene - heightening moods, lyricizing action and making Hamburg seem like a wintry love song. Predictable or not, that's often as good as it gets.
  33. Beauty and the Beast (re-release)
    Beautifully remastered and containing Cocteau's long-unseen special prologue and credits -- is as much a feat of feverish delight as it was in the dark days of Vichy and WWII.
  34. Blue Crush
    If you can simply get lost in the crushing splendor of the waves themselves, the script might not leave you so seasick.
  35. Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
    Though the result is a distant, hyperstylized exaggeration of form and movement, the film itself turns repetitive and exhaustive.
  36. I'm Going Home
    One of the most beautiful of all recent films on the problems of old age -- and on the interplay of theater and life.
  37. 24 Hour Party People
    Jam-packed mishmash of wall-to-wall music, trenchant character study, slick sociology and sly witty-Brit comedy.
  38. Blood Work
    A violent, improbable movie done in tersely elegant style, and it may be the last action movie for one of the cinema's great action stars, Clint Eastwood.
  39. Secret Ballot
    Reserves its sharpest jabs at the harshly circumscribed lives of women in Iran.
  40. The Château
    Limps along on a squirm-inducing fish-out-of-water formula that goes nowhere and goes there very, very slowly.
  41. xXx
    Suit #3: But what will we call the sequel? Suit #1: "XXXX"? Suit #2: Brilliant!
  42. The Good Girl
    There's a shallowness about The Good Girl that can't always be excused as an accurate portrayal of a shallow milieu -- in the end, just like Justine, it's not as good as it could have been.
  43. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    A children's movie done with genuinely youthful spirit and an easy self-kidding mastery of its own high-tech gadgetry.
  44. Full Frontal
    It's a weird little movie that's amusing enough while you watch it, offering fine acting moments and pungent insights into modern L.A.'s show-biz and media subcultures. But it doesn't leave you with much.
  45. One Last Kiss
    While Last Kiss may strike some as a calculated crowd-pleaser, it's cleverly calculated, perceptive and often quite funny -- and a bit darker than it may first appear.
  46. Signs
    Signs -- though Shyamalan's most visually beautiful work -- seems thinner, barely more than a sketch for a movie, with characters trapped in formulas. Beautifully trapped perhaps -- but paralyzed nonetheless.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    The Master of Disguise
    A disjointed film that, but for brief flashes of comedic verve, should skip theatrical release and go straight to video.
  48. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    He's endearing and affable when finding humor and even introspective life lessons after arrests, drug use and a near-death experience.
  49. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    It is a movie about the gradual erosion of life's seeming certainties, and it's also about the destructive immorality that may lie beneath the most exquisitely composed veneer. As we watch "Chocolat," this great director and his great actress, Huppert, convince us: Evil is.
  50. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    If Hollywood is really a dream factory, then it's the movie moguls and movie stars who live that dream to the hilt. In the late 1970s few lived quite as large as Robert Evans.
  51. The Country Bears
    Unfortunately, the humans only have scripts to support them. So for every bear triumph, Country Bears also features cliched jokes, corny sentiment, ludicrous shtick and the most flabbergasting set of star cameos since Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson wandered into "Men in Black II."
  52. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    It's a shapeless, derivative-but-funny show with another loony parody plot about super-villain Dr. Evil.
  53. Happy Times
    Just as Zhao uses his comic gifts to create an affecting human, so Dong's performance as Wu is a triumph of honesty and tact.
  54. Lan Yu
    Wong Kar-wai made a much more dynamic film, "Happy Together," five years ago. Lan Yu suffers by comparison.
  55. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    This is a rare gem tripped over while making a run-of-the-mill rockumentary about a band's new album.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Stuart Little 2
    A warm, witty, consistently funny family movie with a sweet message about loving yourself, be you a mouse or whatever.
  57. K-19: The Widowmaker
    Bigelow gives this film edge, tension and something you aren't expecting: a woman's touch for teasing out the buried emotion beneath those stoic surfaces.
  58. Tadpole
    But as likable as it is, Tadpole is hardly a maturing woman's revenge movie, but another male fantasy -- that of the sexually nurturing mother figure. If only all coming-of-age sexual experiences could be as healthy and wholesome.
  59. Eight Legged Freaks
    Starts like a house afire and then suffers an imagination burnout.
  60. Sex and Lucia
    The movie is a journey into a land of wonders beneath the surface of consciousness -- but it's also a sexual ride of unabated heat. You may be confused by Sex and Lucia, but you won't be unmoved.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Reign of Fire
    It's a decent, fast-moving and visually powerful summer action romp for the teenage demographic-the dragons are deliciously evil critters, with a nice retro identity.
  62. Road to Perdition
    It's a genteel film with a gun in its pocket, but it's also a film with a universal chord of feeling that keeps welling up from the dark surfaces and violent byways of the plot-and a final confession that both warms the heart and chills the blood.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Tosca
    You would be better off investing in the worthy EMI recording that serves as the soundtrack, or the home video of the 1992 Malfitano-Domingo production.
  64. Metropolis (re-release)
    Trashy and glorious, the restored Metropolis is a pop epic for the ages.
  65. Never Again
    A good-natured but trivial Manhattan romantic comedy.
  66. Halloween: Resurrection
    Like its parade of predecessors, this Halloween is a gory slash-fest. It can't escape its past, and it doesn't want to.
  67. My Wife Is an Actress
    Despite its many charms, the title of the film -- both complaint and boast -- makes clear whose point of view this is. Gainsbourg is delightful, intelligent and sexy, but this isn't her film.
  68. The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    Oscillates between pragmatist genius and B-movie mediocrity.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Me Without You
    The only the bum steer in Me Without You comes in the person of Daniel, played by Kyle MacLachlan of "Twin Peaks" fame. It's hard to tell whether MacLachlan was dealt a bum hand in an otherwise fine screenplay or acted on auto-pilot.
  70. Read My Lips
    A finely written, superbly acted offbeat thriller.
  71. Men in Black II
    A business-as-usual blockbuster blueprint that rarely surprises you.
  72. Songs from the Second Floor
    A brilliant, absurd collection of vignettes that, in their own idiosyncratic way, sum up the strange horror of life in the new millennium.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Powerpuff Girls
    "The Movie" is bigger, brighter and boomier on the big screen than the series is on cable, but is it any better? The short answer is no, but that's not necessarily bad.
  74. Like Mike
    Doesn't win any points for originality. It does succeed by following a feel-good formula with a winning style, and by offering its target audience of urban kids some welcome role models and optimism.
  75. Mr. Deeds
    Turturro is the one thing that's right with the movie. Perhaps the weakest thing about the new "Deeds" is its utter lack of a strong viewpoint and real emotion.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Pumpkin
    Wildly uneven but nonetheless intriguing and funny.
  77. Lovely & Amazing
    Delivers a surprising, moving portrait of contemporary womanhood.
  78. Harvard Man
    Toback's films deliver a lot of bang for the buck. He's one of the few serious and original directors who can mix group sex and talk of existentialism; a fast-paced basketball sequence cut with scenes of Mafia members plotting a hit; and an in-class philosophy lecture stylishly edited with Alan's memories of a contradictory in-bed discussion.
  79. The Cockettes
    It puts The Cockettes into social, political and popular cultural context and gives the documentary a moving resonance.
  80. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    It's a refreshing theme for a kids' movie, one that incorporates history and urban flavor, not to mention a preservationists' perspective, into the usual mix.
  81. Notorious C.H.O.
    Establishes the comedian as just that: notorious -- in all the best ways outlaw comedy can make you a star.
  82. Sunshine State
    Visually, even compared to Sayles' own best work, it's somewhat prosaic - and dramatically, it suffers from the fact that its two main characters are kept so far apart. But the screenwriting and the cast redeem this film.
  83. Dahmer
    A tasteful, intelligent, well-acted film about one of the most ghoulish serial killers in American crime history - and I'm afraid that's a good part of what's wrong with it.
  84. Minority Report
    May show both director and star working at their professional peaks, but I don't think it's as good as that underappreciated masterwork "A.I." It's not as resonant and daring, not as full of magic and marvel. Spielberg stretches himself technically here but not emotionally.
  85. Lilo & Stitch
    Despite its charms, and the refreshingly non-traditional characters, Lilo & Stitch seems diluted and too derivative to be as effective as one wants it to be.
  86. Juwanna Mann
    It's tempting to call traveling on Juwanna Mann, except it never goes anywhere. This film fouls out.
  87. War Photographer
    Finally, the film answers a question that obviously haunts Nachtwey: Is it immoral, callous or irresponsible to win fame and recognition from images of the terror, death and suffering of others?
  88. Freeze Me
    The whole movie plays like an improbable blend of "Repulsion," "High Noon" and the archetypal low-budget rape/revenge shocker "I Spit on Your Grave." Queasy audiences beware, but midnight-movie bookers take note.
  89. Windtalkers
    It's the best new battle film since "Black Hawk Down," a movie it surpasses in sheer feeling and bravura style, if not in nightmarish panic and suspense.
  90. The Bourne Identity
    Liman packs enough firepower into The Bourne Identity to please the summer action fan, including a reshot climax that contains one of the niftier stunts I've seen recently. The centerpiece action sequence is a bravura car chase through Paris, yet the moments that bookend it are equally impressive.
  91. The Emperor's New Clothes
    One of the most clever, most enjoyable historical fantasies to hit screens in a long time, The Emperor's New Clothes is a sumptuous showcase for Ian Holm, who delivers not one but two great performances.
  92. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
    The director's lack of restraint and overabundance of ambition makes "Altar Boys" not boring, but troubled.
  93. Scooby-Doo
    Knows when to take itself seriously and when to laugh at itself -- even if its audience isn't laughing along at every gag.
  94. Cuba feliz
    It's hard to focus on the travails when the music is so lively and good.
  95. Bad Company
    Though they're a good pair (Hopkins and Rock), this isn't a very good movie. It's slick but hollow.
  96. Ivansxtc
    This cynical film paints a hugely unflattering portrait of life in Hollywood's fast lane. I have no way of knowing exactly how much is exaggeration, but I've got a creepy feeling that the film is closer to the mark than I want to believe.
  97. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    Gives us a lot to enjoy and something most studio movies don't even try for: an attempt at the richness, density and sheer contrariness of life.
  98. Secret Society
    Falls prey to a boatload of screenwriting cliches that sink it faster than a leaky freighter.
  99. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
    A landmark movie that becomes a priceless entryway into a distant land and its people, few of whom will ever seem as foreign and far away again.
  100. Cherish
    An uneven mix of genres that, even when it misses the mark, gets points for originality and a good beat.
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